Boring: The Movie!

As you might remember, we have a bit of a competition going among some of the women attending the Woodworking in America conference this week. Megan Fitzpatrick, Heather Griffin (one of the conference organizers) and Kari Hultman from the blog The Village Carpenter are all vying to be the best borer.

As a result, they’ll be competing in the Hand Tool Olympics, sinking a 3/4″ bit through yellow pine to see who is the fastest (points off for a hole that isn’t plumb).

Today we gave Heather a few pointers on boring, then Megan showed us how she was doing. Then Megan tried to kick Heather in the head. Really. It’s in the movie.

By the way, apologies to everyone in advance here. I called both of them “girls” during this short video. Yes it took only 1:09 for my Southerness to shine through. In Arkansas we call 70-year-old grandmothers “girls.” And until my voice changed, they called me “girl,” too.

In any case, the boring climax of this competition will occur at the Saturday-night banquet at Woodworking in America. It’s a full card: Roy Underhill and a catfight.

LOL@ Ron! Alfred, I didn’t speed up my video, but the bit I was using had just been sharpened, so that probably helped. I’m sure this will be a photo finish between the three of us. I just hope I’m out of range of Megan’s fierce kicking boxing maneuvers.

Makes me wonder if Kari either had the better brace/bit, accelerated the speed on the video, drilled softer wood, or was just faster.
My other suspicion, did someone give them a blunt drill bit or one of those with a rather high cutting angle. If the wood is yellow pine, I would use a Jennings-type bit which would require more turns but allows you to go faster.

Not the I would play favorites (I do like Megan; any gal that would trade her panties for woodworking tools is a friend of mine 😉 ), but isn’t Heather boring into a harder section of that plank?

Heather appears to be boring through a section of vertical latewood (riftsawn in nature), while Megan is boring through a section that is horizontal in section (flatsawn in nature). Is calling it end grain vs. face grain a fair statement?

Given the choice, I think I would have opted for the section Megan is trying.

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